Lately, I’ve been feeling quite put upon because I have to brush my own hair.

Granted, I have a lot of hair, but I suspect my petulance is due to watching too much Downton Abbey, a show in which every other meaningful conversation seems to take place at a dressing table, with a lady who sits and looks dainty while her maid stands behind her and tends to her hair.

For those of you busy watching Game of Thrones, Downton is a British series that documents the lives of the very, very rich and their very, very many servants in a ridiculously big and fancy house in Yorkshire 100 years ago. Much drama ensues.

I love being able to watch TV shows back to back on Netflix or iTunes — surely a societal shift as important as when the telephone arrives at Downton — but there is a downside to binging on three- or four-hour long shows a night. For one thing, you don’t get the laundry done and for another, I start to take on a posh accent and say “quite” a lot. It’s precious, to be sure, but it’s better than the vocabulary I acquired while mainlining all five seasons of the Wire a few years ago.

My daughter was a little concerned with my Wire obsession, not so much with the coarse language I picked up from the Baltimore-based cop and drug dealer drama, but with my fixation with Omar (a good-ish bad guy) and McNulty (a bad-ish good guy).

“You know they’re not part of the family, right mom?” my girl asked one evening as I regaled the family with the lads’ latest escapades. But they were, kind of. When my brother picked up the Wire habit a few months later, I couldn’t even say, “Omar comin’ . . . ” without him shushing me because he was so afraid that I’d give something away.

There is far less murder and not even one nail gun in Downton Abbey. In fact, there is far less industriousness of any sort. Half the characters — the rich ones, ’natch — spend most of their time bored out of their minds longing for something to do while the servants are run off their feet.

But all in all, those servants may have been a happier lot, because as any good farmer knows, being productive can play an important role in being happy. In a New York Times piece recently, Arthur C. Brooks, the guy who wrote the book on happiness (Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America — and How We Can Get More of It) argued that our work has a significant influence over our happiness.

Decades of research shows that about half of our individual happiness is due to genetics, you either inherit a happier disposition or you don’t. Another big chunk, 40 per cent, is due to events that have happened recently — “like moving to California” — but that kind of happiness wears off fast, says Brooks. And another 12 per cent of the happiness equation is up for grabs. It’s “under our control,” he says, and influenced by our faith, family, friendships and work.

But work doesn’t necessarily mean money. Studies show that once you’re out of poverty, making scads more money doesn’t bring scads more happiness. It’s more about the sense of accomplishment than it is the fat paycheque — not that there’s anything wrong with a fat paycheque (or so I’ve been told).

Sure, we’ve all seen that old maxim, usually written in a flourish-y script over a picture of a sunset, or maybe babies playing with puppies: “No one on their deathbed wishes they’d spent more time at the office.” But I bet there has been more than one guy who wakes up from the morphine fog in a hospice nightie wanting to get dressed and get to work. “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death,” said that slacker, Leonardo da Vinci.

Certainly not all of us can be a master painter, sculptor, engineer, architect, botanist, inventor and geologist (and that was one of Leo’s so-so weeks), but most of us can put in a good day’s work and enjoy the sense of accomplishment that follows.

Now before you 80-hour-a-week types think that means you should put in 81, consider you have to make time for the other parts of your life that influence your happiness — faith, family and friendship.

And as you enrich your soul — whether through religion, triathlons or volunteering at the foodbank — and find as much time as you can to spend with the people you love, there’s nothing wrong with squeezing in a few nights a month to pig out on some quality TV. Just make sure you get the laundry done, too.

For shorter ramblings and thoughts on Lady Edith’s new do, follow me on Twitter@jenniferallford

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